


Thoughts of you consume

by salvatorestjohn



Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Episode: s01e06 Lost Girls, Heavy Angst, Humanity Switch (Vampire Diaries), M/M, Mentioned Lorenzo "Enzo" St. John, Not Canon Compliant, Rings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-06
Updated: 2020-03-06
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:35:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23041093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/salvatorestjohn/pseuds/salvatorestjohn
Summary: He stands up abruptly, his glass cracking in his hand. Stefan just barely catches a glimpse, but Damon turns his back on him and moves over to the table to set it down. He doesn't say anything right away, breathing slowly. His eyes catch the ring still in his hand. There's another tug of guilt and it's suffocating, trying to smother him. Like a fire.Sliding the ring back onto his finger, he tries to pull back a sliver of composure. His heart's still racing like it's gained his own heightened abilities as he swaps out the glass for a new one, pouring himself another drink. He doesn't acknowledge the cut on his hand, shaking the shard of glass off."You're not handling this well, are you?" Stefan asks."Careful, Stef, you almost sound concerned about me," Damon says, ignoring the question without even a glance back at him, taking a drink."If you just got fifty years worth of memories and suppressed emotions back in one go, then yeah. I'm concerned."
Relationships: Damon Salvatore/Lorenzo "Enzo" St. John
Comments: 6
Kudos: 124





	Thoughts of you consume

The silence in the house rings in Damon's ears. It fills his head, imitating voices. One voice. One face that won't get out no matter how hard he scrubs a hand across his face or for how long he tries to think of anything else. It's all crashing down on him, memory after memory, a constant stream that's making it hard to breathe like water in his lungs. It feels like drowning. Drowning in memories. In feelings. In humanity. 

He's already given up trying to stop it. There doesn't seem to be a way. Damon just stares down at the ring that's the cause of all of this, held between his fingers. The dark blue stone shimmers and swirls with the magic he knows it contains, is imbued into every part of it. This tiny little piece of jewellery. Powerful enough to flip that switch back on when nothing else has been able to in fifty-seven years. 

Guilt tugs at him, deep down, just for having it off. He wouldn't usually risk it, but the heavy curtains are drawn and it's still pitch-black outside, no sign of the sun rising for a good few hours. And being without it for that brief time was enough to do something to him. He had to test it. 

It's just a ring, he tries to reason, staring at it like it's going to argue. The guilt only deepens, giving another swift tug to his gut like he's a dog on a leash, trying to get him to obey and just put the damn thing back on. The longer he stares, the worse it gets. It's never done this before. Whenever his attention has been drawn to the ring over the last few decades, which hasn't been often, it's merely been to ensure it's still there, stopping him from going up in flames. 

Knowing it was away from him where he couldn't find it. It's uneasiness he's feeling. The thought that it could happen again. It was taken while he was knocked out, and knowing Stefan, that could very well be about to happen again soon enough. An uncomfortable pit sits nestled in his stomach at the thought of not having the ring. 

There's the faint sound of the front door opening, then closing again a second later. Damon doesn't even look up. He slides the ring back into its original place, the fourth finger on his left hand, where it should have been the entire time. Staring at it on his hand only throws a clawing in his chest into the mix. 

He takes a drink from the glass of bourbon he poured twenty minutes ago. A welcome distraction. His eyes stay fixed on the ring even as he swallows, as infuriating as it is to him. Letting it out of his sight doesn't even feel like an option. As if it could just magically disappear again.

Footsteps start, then falter. They then continue forward, approaching him, coming to a stop again just a few feet from the couch he's on.

"Do you have any idea the amount of damage you've caused?" Stefan asks, not even bothering to pretend with forced pleasantries or civility. Not even a forced greeting.

It's not like Zach's around anymore for them to have to keep some semblance of peace for him. Because Damon killed him. And his wife. He takes another drink to dull the sharp stab in his chest, ignoring Stefan.

"You killed someone, Damon," he continues anyway, accusatory, and fairly so. "And Vicki's run off to who knows where."

Damon still doesn't say anything, staying quiet as he takes another drink to ease the flood of guilt and regret that comes tearing through him like a particularly angry, violent storm. He is well aware of what he's done. It's all been hitting him blow after blow without pause for the last two hours and he feels like he's about to lose his mind because of it if he doesn't pass out from just how overwhelming it is first.

His face remains a mask, though. Devoid of all emotions while he's being torn down from the inside like he's made of flimsy cardboard. 

"You know. Vicki?" Stefan prompts, trying to get something out of him. Some response, some rise, anything. "The innocent girl you attacked and turned into a bloodsucking monster because you—you were what? Bored? Lonely?"

Damon's glass whines from his grip, his knuckles white. That's exactly right. He was bored. And lonely. He presses his lips tightly together, gritting his teeth. The room almost feels like it's spinning, and he's barely processed his way through the late '60s, or the '70s, never mind Vicki.

"Do you know how many people she could hurt, or worse, kill? She could even turn someone if she was even conscious enough to remember how you did it to her. And Jeremy and Elena are the most at risk here! Because of you."

"You think I don't know that?" Damon snaps, standing before he can stop himself, now facing Stefan. He's met with a narrowed, disbelieving look, but his mind is on fire and he needs to do something before this kills him. "You think that I don't know what I did? You think that—that I don't feel guilty?"

"No," Stefan says without missing a beat, shaking his head. "No, Damon, I really don't. You're not capable of guilt."

Damon scoffs, and he wants to scream about how wrong he is, because it's guilt that's currently tearing his throat, and heart, and mind to shreds. He doesn't say anything. The look in Stefan's eyes says enough for him to know that it wouldn't make a difference. Not really. 

He drops back down onto the couch. "Maybe if you hadn't nearly gotten yourself killed, I wouldn't have had to have killed Logan Fell, and Vicki wouldn't have fed on him or run away," he says instead, almost muttering it to himself.

"Seriously?" Stefan says with a humourless smile. "Blaming me? Typical Damon. Always pinning your mistakes and your bad decisions on me to make yourself feel better and leave me to pick up your pieces. You know what, how about for once, you actually take a little responsibility and do something to try and fix this?"

"I was just stating a fact." It doesn't come out nearly as hostile or irritated as either of them expected. His voice softens the tiniest bit, and a weary note slips through as he says, "I won't let Vicki hurt anyone, alright? I'll...find her and deal with it. Now, if you hadn't noticed, I'm trying to contemplatively drink in peace. Something that's better done when alone..."

He trails off pointedly. The message is fairly clear, and his raised eyebrows should be enough for him to understand, even if Damon's doing everything to not look at him again. Lifting his glass, he takes another long swig, trying to soothe the burn in his throat while his eyes flit back to his left hand. His thumb's still absentmindedly rubbing over the ring.

Stefan, predictably, doesn't move to leave. But he does follow Damon's gaze with a confused glance, folding his arms in front of him with the slightest tilt of his head. A clear sign that Damon was idiotic to think he would be getting any more peace anytime soon. 

"Yeah, I wanted to talk to you about that," Stefan says, nodding at the ring. "When I took it off you, I noticed it wasn't yours. Not the one Emily made, anyway. What did you do with it? Did you lose it or did you just decide that you hated being tied to me so much?"

"Thought you'd be happy people wouldn't automatically know we must be related because we have matching accessories," Damon jokes wryly, sarcasm dripping from his voice to cover up how tight his throat's gotten. 

Stefan shakes his head, apparently in no mood to even pretend to humour him. He breathes out a soft scoff.

"I don't know what I was expecting. You obviously want nothing to do with our name or with me. You don't care. No humanity plus eternal misery. My mistake for forgetting."

"Afraid you're wrong, brother, which I'm sure is a huge shock to you," Damon says, staring into his glass. 

His voice is full of irritation now because he's wrong, because he's not meant to care. He lifts his eyes up to him. 

"Humanity is back on, unfortunately. So, just the eternal misery thing, but I'm having a bit of a hard time keeping to that at the moment as well, clearly."

Stefan falters, not bothering to hide his surprise. "What happened? Was being starved for, what? A day, too much for you?"

He's been starved for much longer, but of course, Stefan doesn't know that. 

"Does it matter?" Damon deflects, taking a last drink. "It's back on."

"No, I want to know why," Stefan insists. "I mean, fifty years is a hell of a long time, Damon. Especially to be going around without being able to feel anything. Not even Lexi could flip it back on for you, so what did it then?"

The mention of Lexi makes his stomach lurch. He never liked her, sure. She was always blaming him for Stefan's life. But what he did, back in New York, on that rooftop. He surprises himself in being glad to hear she's still alive. Stefan would be a lot angrier right now if she wasn't.

"This, actually," Damon says, deciding to just get this conversation over with, for both their sakes. He slips the ring back off his finger, leaving a swooping sort of ache right between his ribs. "Not having my ring. I guess I must have been close to flipping it back on already, but...this just gave me the last shove."

"You were scared?" Stefan asks, seeming doubtful that that's even possible.

"Of losing this?" Damon stares at it, rotating it slowly between his fingers once more. "Yeah, I was scared. And a little pissed that you took it."

"You were a danger to everyone around you, Damon," Stefan says, shaking his head again. "I wasn't going to take the risk of you hurting anyone else. Besides, it's just a daylight ring. As long as you stayed in the house and drew all of the curtains, you would have been fine. That can't be what finally did it."

He's right, in a way. He was angry that Stefan took it, but the fear was something else. It felt like he had lost something more important than just a ring. The last tie he had to something pushed way down long ago, ignored and buried under a sea of repressed guilt that's still threatening to pull him under right now.

"I got it from another vampire," he says before he can stop himself. "A couple years before I turned my humanity off."

Stefan makes a noise, disbelieving and yet not at all surprised. "Seriously, Damon? Let me guess: you stole it off of their corpse?"

There's another lurch in his stomach. This one's far more nauseating, and he clenches his jaw tightly against it, his heart pulsing in his throat. He swallows it back. No corpses. No burned corpses, or pleas for him to stay, or flames and vervain searing his skin as he forces himself to just let everything slip away. For his own good. 

His own good. 

So he could save himself. 

Somehow his own survival doesn't seem as important anymore. He should have tried harder. It doesn't matter if the vervain would have burnt his hands down to the bone, he should have pulled harder on that cage door. Should have searched for the key—he saw it on the guy right next to him, it wouldn't have taken more than a few seconds. And if that didn't work, he should have stayed. Burned right along with him. Instead, he ran. To save himself. 

He stands up abruptly, his glass cracking in his hand. Stefan just barely catches a glimpse, but Damon turns his back on him and moves over to the table to set it down. He doesn't say anything right away, breathing slowly. His eyes catch the ring still in his hand. There's another tug of guilt and it's suffocating, trying to smother him. Like a fire. 

Sliding the ring back onto his finger, he tries to pull back a sliver of composure. His heart's still racing like it's gained his own heightened abilities as he swaps out the glass for a new one, pouring himself another drink. He doesn't acknowledge the cut on his hand, shaking the shard of glass off. 

"You're not handling this well, are you?" Stefan asks. 

"Careful, Stef, you almost sound concerned about me," Damon says, ignoring the question without even a glance back at him, taking a drink.

"If you just got fifty years worth of memories and suppressed emotions back in one go, then yeah. I'm concerned."

Damon pauses at that. He wasn't expecting that. How can Stefan not have given up? A humanity switch shouldn't make any difference. He shouldn't care what he's going through, not after the last week that he's already caused more problems in Stefan's life than a normal brother should. And yet he sounds completely sincere.

"I'm fine," Damon says, lying through his teeth, because they both clearly know that he's anything but fine. But hiding pain from Stefan has always been his thing since they were kids. It's practically second nature to him. 

A beat passes in silence, neither of them speaking. 

Then Stefan says, "You said you got the ring from another vampire. How? Tell me about it."

Suspicion is definitely creeping its way into Damon. Stefan's too curious, pushing too much. He should have brushed the entire conversation aside by now, deciding it isn't worth hearing. Why would it be? It's not like it matters. It's just a ring. 

Except it's not. 

"Met him in fifty-three," Damon tells him, turning around now to face him. "Enzo St. John. He was actually a soldier in Europe in World War Two, maybe the two of you knew each other before we did."

Stefan doesn't play along to his joke, but he isn't rolling his eyes at him either. He just waits, listening. Damon isn't so sure that he's going to want to hear the rest of his story, though. But he's in too far now, and it's all building up inside of him, barely contained, and he has to get something out before it bursts.

"He was my cellmate. And before you ask, no, I don't mean in prison." He gestures his glass in a vague motion, his eyebrows furrowing. "It was in this basement, though it was more of a dungeon really. Basically, our bodies were unwillingly donated to science so that a bunch of lunatic doctors could perform illegal experiments on us to test just how far a vampire's abilities go and how it could better medicine or... some other crap."

"Hold on," Stefan literally holds a hand up as if to stop him, staring at him in confusion. "What are you talking about?"

"Augustine Society," Damon says, and even just those two words make his skin crawl and his stomach turn. "Basic gist: they kidnap vampires, lock them up, torture them. Claim they're doing it for the advancement of science. Not entirely sure what cutting out my eyes had to do with science or the betterment of society, but hey, I'm not a doctor. Could have been, but college wasn't really my thing. Nor was becoming a doctor."

Stefan's shaking his head. Apparently his answer did very little to answer his question, still looking just as lost. Damon can't blame him. 

"Wait, so you were kidnapped and tortured?" Stefan asks. "For how long? How the hell didn't I know about this?"

Damon rolls his eyes and spreads his arms out, speaking as if it should be clear. "Because we hated each other? Like I said, it was in fifty-three and I was there for five years, so by the time I escaped, there was no point in tracking you down just to tell you."

"Five years?" Stefan repeats incredulously. "No. That's not...it couldn't have been five years, I would have noticed something was wrong, that you were—were missing, or at least not trying to ruin my life like you usually were."

Something about his words hurt. Equivalent to a stake inches from his heart. 

"Yeah, well," Damon shrugs, "I thought you'd come and get me out. But you didn't. And so there wasn't any reason to burden you with knowing what had happened after I was already out. It's not like it would change anything."

Stefan actually looks hurt and angry. He doesn't say anything though. It's like he can't find the right words, and Damon honestly isn't sure he wants him to. There's nothing he can say now. It was fifty-seven years ago, half a lifetime for a human. No point in making a big deal out of it, because it only makes it so much worse, and he's barely holding onto his last tether of sanity at this point.

Then Stefan quietly asks, "How did you get out, Damon?"

He takes another drink. It burns but not nearly as much as the smoke from the fire did when it filled his lungs, or the taste of vervain that was in the air. It's almost soothing. Like he's still there. Hasn't done it yet, still has the chance.

"Well, I met Enzo," he says. "He had already been there ten years before I arrived. Somehow hadn't lost his hope at all. He even made me keep mine. He'd always talk to me after one of Dr. Whitmore's sessions to try and take my mind off of it."

"Sounds like you were really close," Stefan says, a particular tone clearly used with caution. 

Damon makes a noise at that, the barest amount of amusement. "Ironic considering we were separated by a brick wall and bars the entire time we were in there together." He looks down at his glass. "But yeah. We were close."

It doesn't feel like enough, like it's too little, too simple to describe him and Enzo. What else is he meant to say? 

Stefan tilts his head. "How did you end up with his ring then? Did something happen to him in this... Augustine place?"

Damon can see where he's going with that, and he's really not that far off. He just can't decide if the thought of Enzo dying on that table at the hands of Whitmore is worse than what Damon did to him. No. Something stabs at him, sharp. It wouldn't have been worse. It couldn't have been, nothing can feel worse than this.

"They didn't torture him to death if that's what you're asking," he says quietly, eyes drawn back to his ring. Enzo's ring. "He gave it to me. Thanksgiving, three years after I got there. Nineteen-fifty-six, I'm sure. Patsy Cline droned on through the radio the entire day, so it sounds about right."

He slides the ring off of his finger again without really thinking. It feels so heavy in his hand, like he can literally feel the weight of the magic it possesses and everything it must have endured along with Enzo. 

"Enzo had no idea who created it for him," he adds, as if it matters. "Some witch. Heretics, they called themselves apparently. He just woke up on a ship, freshly turned with a ring on his finger that stopped him from burning in the daylight."

"How come he gave it to you, then?" Stefan asks. "I mean, I assume there wouldn't be all that much daylight in a dungeon. Neither of you would have really needed your rings, but even if you did, you had your own. Or did something happen to it?"

Damon shakes his head, and something sinks inside of him. "Nothing happened to it. I gave it to Enzo."

He looks up at last as Stefan stays quiet this time, his expression a mixture of confusion and that analyzing look of someone trying to fit the pieces together and get to the end before Damon does, trying to figure out where this story is headed. 

"We had this thing on Thanksgiving where we would come up with a list of things we were thankful for." Damon rolls his eyes, and the prick in his chest is fonder now, even if still so painful that someone might as well be squeezing his heart in their hand. "Enzo's idea. Always the optimist. But usually it was stupid things, like music, or good bourbon, or some book that Enzo decided was the best piece of literature to exist. That year..."

The ring glints despite no possible light to really catch it. He just twists it around, and around, heart aching in his throat like he swallowed the whole glass instead of just the bourbon. 

"Things were different, I guess. I just wasn't feeling all that thankful. Enzo insisted, but..." he sighs, running his thumb over the lapis lazuli stone in the center, "I could only think of one thing. I was thankful for him. For keeping me hopeful, and sane, and stopping me from flipping the switch in those five years. For meeting him at all, I guess. He was the one who kept me going. Made it all a little more bearable."

Stefan hums, a quiet, short little noise in the back of his throat, staring at the floor. There's a slight crease between his eyebrows.

"What?" Damon asks. 

He lifts his eyes back up to him and shakes his head. "I just haven't heard you talk about anyone like that since...well, Katherine, I suppose."

"No," Damon immediately says, ignoring the twist in his stomach at her name. The reason he's even here. "They were nothing alike."

"I'm sure they weren't," Stefan agrees. "Enzo sounds... kind. And caring. We both know that wasn't Katherine's nature. But you have this same look on your face and the same voice that you did back in eighteen-sixty-four when you talked about her or were just around her. It just feels... more intense this time. Stronger."

Damon considers that. It's strange now that he's thinking, but Katherine rarely crossed his mind in those five years. Of course she cropped up now and again, especially when Enzo would ask about her. Apparently he liked a good romance. Damon wouldn't exactly say it was good. Or at least didn't end well. Then again, neither did he and Enzo.

"Guess that means it won't be much of a surprise to you then that I loved him," Damon says, and is immediately hit in the chest with his own words. If they could knock the wind out of him, he's sure they would have, and everything just aches. "I still do, I suppose. Funny that."

Sure enough, Stefan doesn't look at all surprised. Still confused, probably more over how the hell Damon has this whole part of his life without him finding out. The whole reason for him flipping his humanity. Lexi couldn't even get it out of him no matter how hard she tried. The one thing getting Damon is the sympathy. After everything, Stefan feels sorry for him. 

"Yeah, that's sort of how it works for us." He shrugs. "No matter how much time passes, it's harder for us to let go." 

Realization spreads across his face, his eyes darting to the ring. 

"That's why your humanity came back."

Damon just stares at the ring. One tiny little thing. So easily lost if he wasn't careful. Then he would have nothing left.

"We gave each other our daylight rings on that Thanksgiving," he says, his voice barely audible, but he knows Stefan can hear him as if he's right next to him. "Another one of Enzo's ideas. He said it would be a good way to remind ourselves that there's some hope, especially when one of us had to listen to the other being tortured. It was a little piece of us. Always with the other. No matter what."

The room's so quiet. Damon is aware of how it sounds, and he's aware of what it means. 

He slips the ring back on and something eases inside of him. Maybe it's just the vampire side of him being comforted by the assured safety. But he knows it's the other part that's finally worked its way back into him, the sliver of humanity that he's clinging to now. Relieved to know it's there. Just as Enzo said when he slipped it through those little bars.

"Can't help but notice you're still using the past tense," Stefan notes softly. "What happened to him, Damon?"

Damon bites down hard on the inside of his cheek, staring blankly ahead. He forces himself to say, "Me."

Turning away from Stefan, he drinks down the last of the bourbon in his glass. He sets it down on the table, not bothering to refill it this time.

"I happened to him."

Silence falls back over the room. He knows Stefan wants to push; he can feel it from him, the need to ask. He would do the same if the roles were reversed. But the silence lays unbroken like an uncomfortable, suffocating blanket. Stefan doesn't push or prod. He leaves it there, and Damon's relieved to hear footsteps a moment later, leaving him alone in the room. 

**Author's Note:**

> OKAY. SO. I know that in the show, it isn't possible for vampires to swap daylight rings/amulets because they apparently don't work like that. But in Stefan's Diaries, Stefan was able to give his to Lexi, so I'm gonna go ahead and pretend that that's the canon we're working with, because I need this. I think Damon's humanity actually flipped back on after everything with the tomb, but I just liked this angsty idea too much to not write it, so here we are!


End file.
